Graduation Speech : The Lesson Plan

On February 11th, 2016 I attended the Houston Independent School District’s (HISD) school board meeting. I received a first-hand experience of how educational decisions are made and I also witnessed all the intricacies of the process. An article entitled Understanding Your School Board states that “school boards are entrusted by the public to translate the needs of students into policies, plans, and goals that will be supported by the community” (www.tasb.org). In other words, the board and its members are responsible for making and enforcing essential decisions for the school district. They are ultimately a strong determining factor for their students’ academic success.

As a pre-service teacher it is important to shift the mindset of students from thinking of getting the right answer and instead encourage critical thinking. The purpose of group learning activities is to help struggling students.To properly implement heterogeneous groups in my teaching I will make sure to articulate my goals during group work, and include academic objectives. I want to make sure that students achieve social skills that they may want to develop. It is critical to helping groups get started therefore I will explain the group’s task. I will explain how the task involves individual accountability, and how they will be assessed throughout the process. During group work monitoring and regularly observing group interactions and progress, by circulating during group work is something I would do as a teacher. Circulating during group work will make it easy to observe problems, allowing me to intervene and help students move forward on the task. I think getting different perspective is important and I plan on discussing with future colleagues what works best and what curriculum we are finding more

Having had the opportunity to assess children’s learning during PPL3, it is clear that there are certain strategies that best suits the needs of individuals. From studying lesson plans and evaluations, and from general observation it is clear that group work was often beneficial, and gave the children the chance to work with peers of different ability levels and different learning styles, so that they were able to develop and learn from their peers. Group work is great for getting children to work collaboratively, whether this is as a pair, or as a group of 6, or a group of 12, it takes them out of their comfort zones and to adapt to new situations. Using different strategies such as think-pair-share and mixed ability groups as well as self chosen groups can really determine the quality of children’s learning. I shall be looking into these strategies and reviewing my own teaching and how they were beneficial or detrimental towards a child’s education.

Belair Elementary School has four hundred twenty-five students, of those students forty-four have IEPs (Individualized Education Plan) or 10.3 percent. One instructional strategy that I could implement for these students is that of small group work. Small group work has many benefits such as the students will receive support from others in the group. So they are not just doing independent work but learning from others and interacting with others. Also, group work focuses on specific skills of those students. With that I could match instruction to each students’ needs and have them work with students who will help them learn. The teacher can place students in specific groups based on their specific groups so they will learn from the group and

How are you doing? This is Will, the tall black guy you would sometimes see in service. I'm writing to say goodbye. My project in Carson City came to an end and I've moved back to Texas. Thank you so much for making me feel at home at Hope. Your messages kept me going while I was in Reno. God used your words to truly bless me and also show me where I need to improve. Sorry I didn't get a chance to say goodbye in person, but everything happened so fast.

As Godinho (2013) highlights, planning for teaching is a complex process and requires careful attention when selecting appropriate resources, learning experiences, teaching strategies and assessment procedures. Differentiation strategies included providing cooperative learning opportunities based on ability groupings, breaking learning down into smaller chunks to allow students to experience success and providing additional hands-on and interactive activities to assist students who needed further support (Tomlinson & McTighe,

Shanahan (2011) makes an excellent point that for each discipline there should be a different way of ensuring that learning is taking place. Not all disciplines are the same, so their approaches should be different as well. If students struggle with history they may also struggle with English if they are taught the same way. Learning goals and strategies vary by class and so should teaching method and delivery. The points in this article should be taken into consideration when teachers create lesson plans.

It is important that teachers consider the factors in how they group their students together. Each grouping method has positives and negatives and suits some learning tasks more than others. The main methods of grouping are; ability, cross ability, cross ability varied, friendship, interest, student, selected, cross-age, eclectic, pairs and whole class (Whitton et al., 2016). Teachers should consciously select a method after considering the pluses and minuses for each and how well it will work among the students in their specific class and with the specific purpose that they have planned. For example, in a class where students are often talkative and noisy, allowing students to select

With this model, teachers employ a structure that allows for small, flexible grouping and the targeting of instruction on the specific skills and concepts that need to be reinforced. Small groups may include students focusing on mastering a portion of the lesson or providing time for more intensive teaching.

Rachel Lotan talks about five specific design features that can help students’ academic and social growth close the achievement gap while working in group settings. There can be so many problems while working in groups, so in order for them to work and be effective, teachers must fully understand how to create learning tasks that are “group-worthy.”

The idea of group work has been increasingly integrated into the learning process today. Teachers now allow more group work among students. Allowing to do so gives the students more freedom and thus a cushion like feeling that

Analysis of the three identified stages stated on the lesson planner shall take place within this assignment. Links will be shown between the teaching methods that were incorporated in this lesson planner which met particular learning characteristics, traits and needs of the group or an individual(s) and relevant educational and theoretical principles. The lesson planner has been placed in the appendices, as a referral resource, for this assignment.

Another area that is closely related to differentiation is small-group instruction within the whole-group setting. Incorporating small groups into the regular classroom setting allows for more flexibility in adjusting desired learning goals for small groups of students. Enrichment opportunities can be included for students who have demonstrated mastery of a concept and remediation for those who require more assistance. Research indicates that the inclusion of small-groups promotes greater gains in achievement than whole-class instruction (Abrami, Lou, Chambers, Poulsen, & Spence, 2000). Although these methods may be time

If you had changed so much then and developed new ways of seeing things, think about what can be achieved when you are consciously pondering and eagerly

English class seemed to be the most dreadful to take within school. Writing essays for most of my grade in a class is not what I was looking forward too. When I entered college I knew that it would be one of many challenging classes I would have to take. Starting from the lowest English class to moving on up, the writing assignments became longer and more thought out. The time came when I got into this class that I knew more work was going to have to be put into essays and thus brought out what I had not seen before in my work progress.